I chose “Pilot diverts plane over Jewish teen’s in-flight prayer” by Kathy Matheson in the Associated Press to critique. The article covered a small 15 passenger flight between New-York and Kentucky where a Jewish teenager caused a fiasco while praying in flight with tefillin, a pair of small black leather boxes used for morning prayer. The flight crew was alarmed when the teen strapped the boxes onto his arms and head and diverted the flight for the safety of the passages after they did not get a clear response from the teen on the nature of the boxes.

Melvin Mencher describes seven criteria for a successful news story. The first of these rules is properly attributing your sources. Matheson’s sources were flight attendants, the teens involved , the teens grandmother, the Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore, FBI spokesman J.J Klaver, and a couple rabbi. These sources were either firsthand viewers of the incident or qualified to make the remarks quoted in the article. The technical information about the incident was quoted to the FBI spokesman or the police Lt. while the situation on the plane was taken from the flight attendants and the teens. This attention to sources makes the article more reliable to the reader. The next property of a news article is completeness does the story contain enough documentation to make the main point. I felt this article was complete; the situation was explained, we know what happened to the teenager and the crew after the incident, and we received some feedback from the Jewish community on the situation. Mencher says a story needs to be balanced and fair. Matheson does this by getting accounts from both the teenager and the flight crew. She also gets opinions from two rabbi’s one agreeing with the flight team’s decision to divert the flight, and another more offended by their ignorance to Jewish customs. Mencher considers objectivity a crucial part of a journalists duty. Matheson stays objective through out the article by not mentioning her opinion on the incident and showing both sides to each issue raised in the article. Articles should be brief and to the point to keep readers interested Matheson does this by being succinct in her sentence structure, and only including information she deems necessary. Mencher also mentions that the story should be well written by this he means clear direct and interesting. I feel Matheson succeed in this as well. She includes facts in the beginning of the article to inform the reader while they are most interested in the story and then humanizes the article with the opinions from the Jewish community at the end. The last and probably most important criteria for a successful news article is accuracy. Does the reported get the facts right? After looking at other reports on the flight I can find no discrepancies in the information. I feel that based on Mencher’s criteria for a successful news article Matheson created an excellent write-up on the incident.